


Sciocchi

by Unovis



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: M/M, bar story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-09
Updated: 2013-11-09
Packaged: 2017-12-31 23:40:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1037766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unovis/pseuds/Unovis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A cold, rainy night; a bar; an old lady's tale. We know what we like. <br/>Another re-post, this one from 2009 hlh_shortcuts exchange. I thought I'd dig up all my old bar stories, to have in one place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sciocchi

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jay Tryfanstone (tryfanstone)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryfanstone/gifts).



A sad, wet, and bloody man stood in an alley. His name was Duncan MacLeod. We know that because it was written on the waistband of his underpants, which under all were also sad, wet, and bloody. He had a sword. He was alone, except for a headless corpse. The rain made him wet. The sword made him bloody. Everything, everything tonight, made him sad.

The alley could be anywhere, any time. This one stank of fish. Above it rose a span of train tracks. Around it were narrow streets and crooked alleys that stank of other things. It was Chinatown, in the city of New York. It was one in the morning in mid December, this year, whenever you're reading this, if the world hasn't come to an end. If Chinatown, if New York still exists. We're pretty sure it does.

We like this man; we could love him, easily, from a distance. He's beautifully made. His eyes are clear and brown, his hair is rich and brown and long again right now, and he's tall and broad and just muscular enough. His skin is golden from exposure to the sun. When it wasn't raining. When he wasn't bloody or sad. He dresses nicely in clothes that draw the eyes and hands. He loves women, carefully. He loves men, less often and recklessly. His mind and heart are thoughtfully packed.

So, rain coming down, alley, bloody, sad. There had been an explosion of electric bolts, shattering glass, bursting crates of fish offal, and maybe a car alarm. There aren't many alarmed cars in Chinatown, but tourists will investigate the most awkward areas. No one paid much attention. The streets weren't empty. They never are in Chinatown. At one a.m., in the rain and cold, curiosity ranks below survival and getting where you're going. Trains rattled overhead. Duncan knew he should get on his way. There was no good place to hide the body. There wasn't enough left of the fishy crates and their contents to cover it. Maybe just the head. He'd leave it to the Watchers. Duncan was sore and cold and the wound in his arm, the wound that went to the bone, was nearly healed. He cleaned his sword on his knee, sheathed it in his overcoat, and shuffled toward the lights at the alley's end. He steadied himself, once, on the lowered ladder of a fire escape at head height. He grimaced at the feel of it, the chipped heavy layers of paint, the greasiness in the dripping rain. He'd lost a glove. The loss of blood, or the cold, or the quickening he'd just absorbed unsteadied him. It shouldn't have been difficult to digest. The boy was young and vicious and drunk. Duncan learned nothing more, taking him. Maybe it was the emptiness of the life he felt, the uncoiling waste under his ribs. He felt it in his liver, as Marcus used to say.

Fight or fuck it out, Fitz used to say. No question which Fitz preferred. Thinking of Fitz dead depressed him. Not in the mood for a fight, which he'd just had unhappily. Fuck...was better. A hot shower and a soapy washcloth and then sleep in a dry, deep bed. He wiped his face and walked toward Canal. There was blood on his sweater and coat sleeve, not too noticeable in the dark but visible under lights. Hotel was unwise, should the police find the body before the Watchers. Home was in Hoboken. So was his car, snugly garaged. He touched his breast pocket, making sure of his wallet. A taxi willing to make the trip was remotely likely. More likely was the train, walking and waiting and train and more walking, and slow but sure he'd make his cold, wet way to bed. He set out, eyes down. Horse, his body, knew the road.

We like this man. We'd like to see him happier than this, though he's beautiful even when he's sad and bloody and wet. But let him walk. We also like another man.

At this same time, there was a clean, dry, and grinning man in a bar. He was a man who loved bars. His name was a matter of rumor and legend and not written in his underpants because he wore none. If he did, written there would be the name of Duncan MacLeod, whose clothes he loved to wear. Whose name, we'll say here and now, is written large in indelible laundry marker on the band around his heart. We call him Methos, because it pleases him.

The bar is not quite in Chinatown, although Chinatown has bled large, over Little Italy and other neighborhoods both men knew years ago. This bar is Sicilian. Before that it was a speakeasy and before that, Sicilian. It was up a short flight of iron stairs from the sidewalk. The door leaked light through ancient blinds. The window was small and square and on its inside sill lay a snarl of tinsel garland and red and yellow lights. The owner believed that adequately covered any holiday. He believed, in the corners of his mind where the bar rag didn't quite reach, that it went quite well with the dark red painted walls and tin ceiling and blood red floor. Methos would have agreed, amiably. Methos lived, for the time being, above the bar.

We said we like this man, and it's true. As for loving him...Grandma wasn't born yesterday. We know a lost cause when we see, smell, and pinch one, and lick its alabaster neck. But we love to watch. He's artfully made. His hands are large and inquisitive, his eyes are hazel, his hair is dark brown, his skin is pale and shows his beard early in the day. He's tall and long limbed with an ancient athlete's build. His nose is large and distinctive but surprisingly difficult to draw. He's grateful for that. He dresses badly when convenient, and well (it's rumored) when required. He loves rarely and unfortunately and reluctantly and deep. When required. His mind is a dangerous place.

So, rain coming down outside, warm, dry, amused. What weather could be seen through the window was delightful to observe from a padded seat at the bar. An old gas fireplace stood in the corner with its flames behind a yellowed glass screen. Methos grinned at Vinnie's grumbled joke about rats and the liquor board. They were alone at the short counter. At a table by the fire sat two withered men, writing accounts on an envelope. Just family here, just after the place should be closed, waiting for Maria Grazia to arrive. The door wasn't locked yet. Might as well make a buck while they're there. Methos was thin, but lethal with a lead pipe, Vinnie knew. Methos drank for free tonight, and every Sunday-Monday late night. He was, we may assume, content with his current life. He needed little. He read much. The back of his apartment shared a wall with the church next door.

He was thinking of entering the film program at NYU. Fight or fuck was far away.

Or maybe not. Duncan MacLeod turned a corner onto the street of Vinnie's bar and stumbled off the curb into water and ice. He'd been elbowed from the walk by a little woman in a shawl collared coat and headscarf and umbrella and a flat pocketbook wider than she was. She elbowed him out of her way and a very large man behind her grabbed her arm. Duncan, wet, bloody, chivalrous Duncan, launched himself from the puddle to the pavement between the little old lady and the menacing man, his arm like a bar between them, saying "Excuse me," and a sharp pain pierced his thigh. "Animal!" screeched the woman, and jabbed him with her hatpin again

"'S okay, Nonna Marie," said the large man (the large black man Duncan realized, making him blink at "nonna"). "I got him. You go on in, now." He squeezed Duncan's shoulders between his hands and moved him bodily back into the gutter, out of their way.

Duncan broke the man's hold with a fluid movement, then raised his hands. "Sorry, friend. A misunderstanding." His thigh throbbed. It healed, but the jolt of the jabbing pain lingered.

"On your way," said the man, waving Duncan off. He backed away, facing Duncan, until he stood at the foot of the steps the old lady climbed. He stood while she went through the door at the top of the steps, into a nameless, red and yellow lighted restaurant or bar. Bar, open at this hour. Duncan squared his shoulders irritably and turned around, squelching back on his way, settling his coat. He stopped after a block and a half. He settled his coat again. And he swore.

***

"Upazz’," huffed Maria Grazia, slapping her pocketbook onto the bar. Methos tsked and held out his hands to receive her coat, and her scarf, and her other scarf, and her umbrella. She unbuckled her boots.

"Something?" Vinnie asked Henry, the guardian from the sidewalk, just coming through the door.

" 'S nothing," said Henry. "Another good Samaritan, saving Nonna from the boogey man."

"È brutt’ e pazz’! I got him. Henry got him, good." Maria Grazia took a black leather rectangle from her cardigan pocket and poked it across the bar.

Vinnie wiped his hands on his apron and picked it up. "E che quest’?" he asked, opening it. "Ma--you boosted his wallet?"

"Ahh," said Maria Grazia. "My feet are cold. Pour me a brandy."

"Ma, you can't take things like that. You get a steamed milk, you go to bed."

"With brandy," said Maria Grazia. "I still got it. Fifty dollars tonight, at the mahjong."

"You're a shark, Nonna," said Methos. He reached behind the bar and fished up the bottle of Anís del Mono. To Vinnie's frown, he said, "I knew a woman who drank anisette every night of her life and lived to be a hundred."

"All the women you know lived to be a hundred. They drank, they gambled, they smoked cigars. You know too many old women," said Henry. The men at the table, their bookkeeping finished at last, shambled out. Behind them, Henry flipped the door sign to "Closed" and turned the locks. "I'll take a shot, if you're pouring."

"Who was he?" asked Methos. While Maria Grazia sipped her glass of anisette and Vinnie steamed a mug of milk, he tilted open the wallet. A wave of Presence smacked him in the face. The band round his heart strummed. "Oh, hell," he laughed. And Duncan MacLeod beat his fist on the bar door.

***

Duncan knocked and felt a Presence pounding back. He stopped, knuckles on the door; he tried to peer through the blinds, but could only see Henry on the other side, peering back at him. He braced himself, in his soaked shoes and trouser cuffs and resentful thigh and aching arm and bloodied sleeve and sour heart and roiling rage/libido, and loosened his katana in its scabbard. He needed the damn wallet if he was going to get home. Bed. Shower, washcloth. _Home_.

Locks clanked. Henry opened the door a crack. "Let him in," said a voice within. "Let him in, I know him." A voice--that voice? "Oh, hell," Duncan groaned.

Henry moved, at a beckon from the bartender, allowing Duncan inside. Where Duncan saw Methos, Occasion of Sin, Methos grinning at him, seated at the bar. A cinder, a point of heat, trembled in Duncan's breast. _Twang!_ went Methos's heart.

"You dropped your wallet," said Methos, holding it up. "Thank Nonna for finding it."

Duncan squinted at the old bat and bowed. "Vi ringrazio tantissimo." She sniffed at him and drained her liqueur glass. Over her head (her feet didn't touch the ground as she sat on the padded bar stool), Methos looked at Duncan's coat sleeve, his white-knuckled hands, his dark and dripping trousers. "Di niente," he said. "You're welcome." His nostrils flared. _He smells the ozone_ , Duncan thought. In truth, he stank of fish.

Duncan held out his hand for the wallet. "You're hurt?" asked Vinnie, seeing his sleeve, and Henry craned his neck to see. "No," said Duncan. Everyone paused for two seconds, then shrugged, together.

"He's a friend," said Methos, sotto voce to the old woman, and flipped the wallet open again; "E non così brutto," Duncan thought he heard. He stood awkwardly, stranded with the Nonna between them, Henry at his back, the bartender on his flank. "Hoboken? Really?" asked Methos, and Duncan glared. "I'm Duncan MacLeod," he introduced himself to Vinnie, with glances at the others. "I do know this reprobate."

"Where are my manners," asked Methos, not looking up from the wallet. "Maria Grazia, Vinnie, Henry, may I present my old friend Duncan MacLeod. Duncan..."

"Vincenzo Caraceni," said Vinnie, and shook his hand over the bar. "Like on the sign." Duncan didn't see a sign anywhere. Outside, maybe? "My mother, my son. Our mutual friend, then," he said, hitching a shoulder at Methos. "Sit, please."

Duncan checked out Henry, Vincenzo's son, through the single oval mirror behind the bar. He looked even larger, more solid, in here. There was no physical resemblance to Vinnie he could see, no similarity of features. He was impassive but quick eyed, deliberate in his movements. He was square jawed, clean shaven; in his thirties, maybe. The lights, the walls, lent him a ruddy look.

Vincenzo was fifty-ish, or sixty-ish, with brown eyes, iron gray hair, and a clipped moustache. Medium height, narrow build, muscled forearms, neatly dressed: he was vaguely familiar as a type, as someone Duncan might have seen on the streets of Chicago or Boston or here in New York, at any time of the past century. Methos, in his posture, granted him respect. Methos looked easy here _(he looks easy in every bar)_ , at home. _Home_. The little cinder blew to a coal.

Satisfied with his investigation, Methos spread the bill compartment of Duncan's wallet and extracted a ten. He slid it across to Vinnie. "Something warming for Mac, and my same again. We have a lot of catching up to do."

"And my shot," said Henry, easing himself down at the end of the bar. Maria Grazia hoisted her glass at Vinnie. "And my brandy."

"I appreciate the offer," Duncan began, reaching more insistently for his property. "But it's late..."

Methos tucked the wallet under his sweater and pressed it to his heart. "Sit, the man said. It's late, you're wet, and you're not going back to Jersey in the rain." He made eyes at the simmering Scot, comically. A jolt of...something...shot through Duncan's misery. Like a hatpin to the heart. "You'll stay with me. You're welcome."

"And I'm closed. Serve yourself," said Vinnie. He put a bottle on the bar with four glasses, ignoring the bill. "Except you." He set the mug of cooling milk in front of Maria Grazia. "You stay, Duncan." He turned his back to them and began clearing the register. Henry poured out two fingers of the whiskey into each glass. With an eye on Vinnie's line of sight and the mirror, Maria Grazia emptied half of Methos's glass into her milk. "You sit," she ordered Duncan. "You talk to me." She prodded his wet knee with a sticklike finger and Duncan, the conquering warrior, flinched. And sat, and picked up his welcoming glass. The whiskey went down like honeyed fire.

Maria Grazia poked his knee again. "You know this old man?" she asked.

"That's Johnny, Ma, not Nicolo. She gets confused," Vinnie said. "She thinks he's his grandfather. He looks like him."

_Johnny_ , Duncan noted.

"I know what I know," said Maria Grazia. "Where you know him from?"

"A bar," said Duncan. "A bookstore." _My couch. My kitchen. My home._

Methos replenished his own glass, keeping his eyes on Duncan. Vinnie zipped a cash bag closed and went in the back room. Henry put on his coat again. "I'll walk you, Pop."

"You a bad man?" asked Maria Grazia.

"You stay, Duncan," said Vinnie, coming back in an overcoat and hat and scarf. "Upstairs, Johnny'll show you. See you tomorrow, maybe. You go up to bed," he told Maria Grazia. "Be safe. Good night."

"Night," said Henry. He took a black, hook handled umbrella from the stand by the entrance and opened the door, holding it for Vinnie. "Lock it up," he said to Methos/Johnny. Duncan figured he said it every night. It all had the ring of ritual. Methos locked the door, dutifully, and pulled closed the thin wood blinds. He went behind the bar and pulled a plug and the window lights went dark. Duncan watched him and shivered. His sodden shell, his stained, heavy clothes, the yard of steel secreted in his coat, the smell, sat ill over his hot, unsettled core. Methos washed two of the glasses and left them on the board by the sink.

"I don't think so," said Duncan to Maria Grazia. He didn't want to talk to her. Her eyes were penetrating, the kind the gypsies called black. A strega, a witch. Not confused. He shivered, uncontrollably.

"Tomorrow, Nonna," said Methos. "You can talk to Mac tomorrow." And in liquid, crooning sentences in an accent older than Nicolo or her, he iterated the respite, warmth, and rest owed a guest. She sniffed, unenchanted. "You understand him?" she asked. Duncan shrugged, and she shook her head. "Sciocchi." She descended from her seat in stages, ignoring Duncan's offered arm. "We live upstairs," said Methos. "I'll see Nonna up and come back for you. All right, Nonna?"

"You take another cover tonight," said Maria Grazia. Duncan saw them leave the bar through the rear, talking together, Methos at her back. He looked hard at Methos, full at Methos. The back of his head, his shoulders, his legs, his hips. His profile when he turned to answer her. Duncan closed his eyes, blocking him out. He took a deep breath and wondered if he could undo the four locks on the door before Methos returned

*

He could.

He was on the street, running, before he remembered that Methos had his wallet. He didn't care. He had a fare card in his pocket. He could leg it to the WTC PATH. He felt absurdly like a woodcutter fleeing an enchanted cottage. Respite, warmth, and rest! He shivered. _Home!_

He was less than a mile away, crossing an empty three-lane intersection complicated by construction barriers, when Presence and Methos skidded into him. Methos on a bike, black and roaring and raising a sheet of water as they plowed sideways into a wall of corrugated metal and pipes.

... Methos pinning him to the wall, bloody, cold, and wet, tearing open his clothes, his rank shell, and scything through the hot core of pain.

... Methos under him on the pavement, laid open and helpless as Duncan drove into him.

... Methos standing naked, blazing in the rain, defying heaven, sense, and hell.

*

He couldn't.

If he'd tried.

His head jerked back from the split-minute's dream. He blinked. He felt Methos in the bar, at his back, hand on his shoulder. "Home," muttered Duncan.

"La mia casa è la tua casa," said Methos. "Sciocco." And Duncan grabbed him by the neck and took him down, then, on the red barroom floor, then, in the room red and cornered like a heart. Then, in the heat and cold. Then, with Methos's savage agreement, and maybe a sniff from above.

***

So far, so good. That was happier for both sciocchi, maybe. For us, well--we weren't born yesterday; but we know what we like. 

**Author's Note:**

> Sciocchi means "fools." In NY immigrant Italian, scioccho (singular) would sound more like "scorch'" and mean closer to "pain in the ass."  
> Written for Jay Tryfanstone, for the hlh_shortcuts exchange of 2009.


End file.
